The frequently abused golden rule has to be interp...

2008-11-10T11:28:00.000-05:00

The frequently abused golden rule has to be interpreted somewhat abstractly.

If your favorite ice cream is chocolate and your co-workers favorite is vanilla and you decide to get them a treat, would the golden rule have you give them chocolate ice cream because that is what you would want?

That would be a pretty stupid rule. Yet this interpretation is often used by people to justify their own selfishness and social ineptitude.

The proper interpretation is that you would want someone to get you your favorite flavor so you try to get them their favorite flavor.

Any other interpretation is preposterous.

There's quite a discussion of the golden-rule ...

2008-11-10T02:39:00.000-05:00

There's quite a discussion of the golden-rule on the wikipedia page, iirc, including potential reformulations. In particular, they also point out that most versions of the golden rule (apart from the he-with-the-gold version :-P ) can be extended into the "correct" version by taking a broad enough view with enough context.

I.e. do unto others as you want them to do to you -> including taking what you want done to you as part of the context, and thus realising that they'd want you to take their desires of what they want done to them into consideration.

In the end, I'd say any tail added onto the traditional one, to make people aware of the "loophole" and considerate of the "true golden rule" as I'd call it, should hopefully resolve the problem, and your addition is certainly a concise and clear illustration of that problem.

Nice post!

Comments on MindBlink: Perspectives (Part 2): New and Improved Golden Ru...

The frequently abused golden rule has to be interp...

There's quite a discussion of the golden-rule ...